


Break

by speccygeekgrrl



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: M/M, kink meme fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-06
Updated: 2009-10-06
Packaged: 2017-10-02 12:39:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speccygeekgrrl/pseuds/speccygeekgrrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daniel goes for a walk in the garden and finds a junior Icarus with a broken leg.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Break

Daniel Linderman liked to consider himself a practical man. He wanted to make the world a better place, yes, but the bright-eyed idealism had been stripped from him many, many years ago; the man pacing and carrying on before him was partially responsible for that loss.

"--even listening to me, Daniel?" Arthur Petrelli waved a hand in front of his colleague's face, scowling. "You could bother to focus, it's your lawsuit we're discussing here."

"I'm terribly sorry, Arthur." Daniel sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose momentarily. "I need a breath of fresh air. Do you mind if I take a walk through your magnificent garden?" Arthur stared, and the healer resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the unsettling feeling of having his thoughts observed. "I promise not to pluck any flowers," he added dryly.

"Go ahead," Arthur said, waving a hand toward the door. "If you happen to see Peter, tell him I want to talk to him."

"Of course." Leaving Arthur's study, Daniel walked the familiar halls of the Petrelli mansion: this was the room where he and Angela and Arthur and Charles had discussed the possibility of the eldest Petrelli son ascending to power with a little nudge from fate; this was the hallway in which Angela had caught his hand and pressed it to her round stomach with a look of fear, begging him to explain what the doctors had not been able to tell from the ultrasound; this was the window from which he first spotted the terrible betrayal of Kaito and Angela, not only to their spouses but to Daniel as well, who had loved Angela quietly and fervently from almost the day he met her.

This house was filled with memories, the majority of them unhappier than he cared to remember.

The garden changed every time Daniel saw it, seasonally and annually. Now, in late June, the grass was as lush as a new carpet and the roses were blooming in riots of full-blown petals and teasing rosebuds, white and yellow, peach and pink, and the deepest, bloodiest red. He walked leisurely from bush to bush, taking long breaths of each color: sweet, earthy, overwhelmingly floral, until he was nearly light-headed with the summer's favorite flower.

The sound of a crack-- a baseball hitting a bat?-- made Daniel startle; he had just enough time to register the sound before it was followed by an anguished wail. His feet carried him before his mind could catch up, rounding the corner to find a dark-haired boy sprawled on the grass beneath an oak tree that reached for the clouds. _Icarus_, he thought nonsensically, and knelt by the youngest Petrelli's side. "Peter, what--"

Eyes that had been squeezed tight in agony blinked open, and Peter didn't question the older man's presence, simply answered in a tight, pained voice. "My leg, I think it's broken-- oh, god." He bit his fist, face screwing up again, and Daniel looked down.

Oh, the left one was broken, all right. He could feel, even without touching, that the tibia was fractured in multiple places, and the femur cracked: it was amazing that Peter wasn't howling still. "Hold still," Daniel murmured, laying both hands on Peter's thigh, as gently as he could.

Every healing was different, felt different. Plants were cool green streams, mostly just needing an unblocking; Angela's second son had been a tiny puzzle missing pieces, ones that Daniel had to struggle to fill in, but the boy was born without the terrible spina bifida that would quite probably have killed him soon after birth. He had been a puzzle within the delicately torn frame of Angela's lacework body, an extra challenge.

Peter was entirely new; under his palms, Daniel felt a grand piano, flawless and elegant on the outside, but when he opened the lid, there were two snapped strings. "There, there," he soothed, finding the broken edges, healing them back together with careful fingers. He knew the moment he was finished: Peter's labored breathing eased, the frantic beat of his heart began to slow to normal. Daniel opened his eyes and smiled down at his friend's son. "How do you feel, Peter?"

The teenager pushed his bangs back from his forehead, dark eyes shining with suddenly unnecessary tears. "How did you do that, Mr. Linderman?" He touched his leg, meeting Daniel's eyes sharply when his fingers encountered the older man's still there.

"Perhaps I am an angel in disguise," Daniel said dryly, removing his hand and getting ready to stand up. For all that he could heal anyone, anything else, his own aging knees were out of his purview. He was shocked when Peter curled a hand around his wrist, holding him there.

"Are you?" There was so much of Angela in Peter's young face. He had none of Arthur's hard features, but the gentle turn of his lips Daniel remembered well in the days when Angela would kiss anyone but him; his messy hair reminded Daniel of the first time he'd met the Petrellis, Angela's hair choppy, her smiles boundless with newlywed joy. Daniel turned away, suddenly uneasy before the young man.

"If I am, I'm certainly a fallen one," he answered, low and wry. "If you're all right, you should go in. Your father wants a word with you." Peter didn't let go. He actually tugged Daniel's wrist, taking his legs out from under him and leaving him sitting awkwardly on the grass. "Peter, what are you doing?"

The last thing Daniel expected was for Peter to straddle his lap, knees on either side of the older man's skinny hips, and smile brightly at him. "I'm thanking you." One hand cautiously stroked back through Daniel's hair-- white and beginning to thin, but soft under his fingers-- and then he leaned in, head tilted to one side--

Peter smelled of cut grass, fresh sweat, and roses. His lips were salty with already-forgotten tears, and his sigh, oh lord... if Daniel hadn't been damned before, he certainly was now, returning the gentle kisses of his business partner's barely legal son and for a few minutes, not giving the slightest damn about anything but eager lips, the soft skin on the nape of Peter's neck, the dip of his lower back.

He'd have time for regret, self-recrimination, guilt later on; for the moment he was simply grateful for Peter's thoughtlessly unkind affection.


End file.
